


Liberal Leave

by bearonthecouch



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Alcohol, F/M, Fluff, Fraternization Regulations, Friendship, Gen, Making the Best of It, Snow Day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-20
Updated: 2019-01-20
Packaged: 2019-10-13 14:44:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17489897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bearonthecouch/pseuds/bearonthecouch
Summary: It doesn't snow in East City. This is a well established fact.





	Liberal Leave

It doesn’t snow in East City. This is a well established fact, one that every single soldier posted to East HQ has internalized without realizing it. Sure, there was that _one time_ , almost a decade ago, when a freak storm had swept through the eastern region, dumping several inches of snow onto villages and towns as far south as Resembool. But Colonel Mustang was still at the Academy then, making it a time so far in the distant past that it no longer counted when it came to predicting the weather.  
  
But the reporters on the radio were talking about snow. Fuery heard about it first, obviously. He’d looked up from his desk and slid his headphones down to hang around his neck. There was obvious excitement in his grin. Edward Elric was the first one to notice. He kneeled on the couch, resting his arms on the back of it and leaning forward. “Spill,” he demanded.  
  
Fuery pulled out the jack of his headphones, making the radio audible to everyone in the office. It was a civilian station, that much was immediately made clear by the fact that the reporters were urging listeners to stock up on staple foods and prepare for schools to close.

Ed flopped back down onto the couch and stared lazily at the ceiling. “Snow could be fun,” he admitted. Granted, his only experience with the stuff had been when he was young enough to spend hours building a snowman and pelting Winry with snowballs, at least until Den charged out in her defense and knocked him into the soft white blanket that covered the ground. The dog hadn’t stayed out for long, though. She’d whimpered and barked and then fled back into the house and curled up under one of Sarah’s quilts.

“Her leg hurts,” Winry explained. “That’s why she doesn’t come outside a lot. She doesn’t like it when it’s cold. Or really hot, either.”

Ed hadn’t fully processed the meaning of that statement until years later, when he realized that something as simple as a normal summer day could make the hot metal grafted to his skin hurt a hell of a lot more than he let on. A gentle fall of snow would almost certainly have to be easier than feeling like his arm and leg were lighting him on fire. 

He glanced over at Lieutenant Havoc, who was refilling his coffee mug despite the fact that there was less than an hour left in the workday. “Think the colonel will let us cut out early?” he asked no one in particular. Ed raised an eyebrow. He thought the sun was more likely to fall out of the sky than Colonel Bastard ease up on his fucking impossible and never-ending list of orders and missions and reports and research results and whatever-the-hell else.  
  
Although it was apparently about to snow in East City. So maybe “impossible” could be downgraded to merely “very, very unlikely.”  
  
Ed shifted on the couch again, this time perching on the arm of it and smirking agreement as Breda shook his head meaningfully in Havoc’s direction. “If you don’t finish that inventory log, you won’t be leaving at all.”  
  
“How’d I get stuck with the stupid inventory log, anyway?” Havoc griped, although he and his coffee mug did make their way across the room to his desk. “I’m not even in charge of equipment.”  
  
“You lost a bet,” Falman reminded him, without even looking up from his own work.  
  
“I don’t even know what half this stuff is!” Havoc moaned. He turned around and waved the paper in Ed’s general direction. “Do you?”  
  
The teenage alchemist just shrugged. Havoc sighed and clicked his tongue against the back of his teeth. He was dying for a cigarette, but Breda was right. If he didn’t get this stupid thing done, he was going to be buried alone in this damn office with its faded carpet and water-stained ceiling tiles until the oncoming snowstorm melted away, and who knew how long that would take?  
  
Luckily, he didn’t have to actually _count_ the number of cans stocked in the mess or every individual bullet at the gun range. Some other poor sucker had already done that (several poor suckers, actually, low-ranking enlisted men on their first tour, who always got stuck with crap like this). All Havoc had to do was file through their numbers, scribbled on crumpled scrap paper or even, in one case, on a napkin, and try to make sense of their indecipherable handwriting (he had never before realized how closely a 6 could resemble an 8), and then transfer those numbers to a form-in-triplicate worthy of the Amestrian Military, after checking and re-checking to make sure that the numbers were actually mathematically possible.  
  
The office lapsed into a comfortable near-silence, broken only by the occasional weather reports spurting from Fuery’s radio, as Havoc actually focused on his work, for once. Ed had submitted his most recent report to Mustang already, but there hadn’t yet been enough time for the commanding officer to actually read it and berate him for taking stupid risks and destroying public property and altogether behaving like the too-smart-for-his-own-good fourteen-year-old that he was instead of the military officer he was supposed to be impersonating. But this time it wasn’t _that_ bad, honestly. He’d definitely done way worse.  
  
It’d been _months_ since he and Al had been able to look for the philosopher’s stone, he hadn’t even had the time to sit down and try to figure out where to look next. But Mustang dropped those opportunities in front of him every now and then, rewards for good(-enough) behavior. And he’d done what the colonel wanted: he’d figured out what was going on with that little gang of amateur alchemists whose initially petty crimes had shifted to openly brazen bank robberies, in some mid-size tourist town he’d already forgotten the name of. The whole lot of them had been arrested, and though Ed had no real experience with the justice system, he did know plenty about the military, and he didn’t envy them. The State’s patience for the open misuse of alchemy ran very, very short.    
  
“I did good, right?” he called toward the half-open door to the colonel’s private office.  
  
As predicted, it wasn’t Colonel Mustang who stepped out of the room, but Lieutenant Hawkeye, who didn’t bother hiding her smile at seeing Ed, and his casual, adolescent disregard for anything approaching military propriety. Ed slid off the couch and met her eyes. “Come on, Hawkeye, he’s not mad at me, is he?”

“There are some questions about the expense report.”

Ed rolled his eyes. “I have money.”

“State Alchemist research stipends come from an entirely different budget than per diem travel funds.” Falman pointed out, from his nearby desk. “They’re not interchangeable.”

“ _Thank you_ ,” Ed spat sarcastically.  
  
“Happy to help,” Falman replied, with deadpan seriousness.  
  
Hawkeye was as close to openly laughing as Ed had ever seen her.

“Did you know it’s gonna snow?” he asked, as an attempt to try to distract her. Riza frowned, as if she couldn’t be certain whether or not Ed was trying to pull one over on her. “ _Listen_ ,” Ed cried, waving his hand vaguely toward Fuery’s radio.  

The accumulation predictions had gone up in just the last hour. What had started as “probably two inches” was now being reported as “at least two to four.” Starting around midnight, steadily increasing until at least 0700.  
  
And the smile on Hawkeye’s face was genuine. She sat down on the couch and listened as the weather report was once again replaced by music. Ed sat down in the space she’d left for him, curling his right leg up to his chest and wrapping his automail arm around it, while he rested his metal left leg in front of him.  
  
“Does it snow a lot where you’re from?” he asked, realizing as he did so that he had no idea where Lieutenant Hawkeye was from. He couldn’t really picture her anywhere except wherever Colonel Mustang was. They went together, like him and Al. A package deal.  
  
“Not a lot,” Hawkeye replied. She focused on the young alchemist, actually talking _to_ him, rather than over or around him, the way Mustang usually did. Ed had always appreciated that. “But when it did, I’d go walking around in the woods, for hours. Things were… quieter. Softer. It was almost magical.” Ed frowned. His initial instinct was to point out that there was no such thing as magic, but he clamped down on that. Riza seemed to understand his intention, anyway. “I was a child,” she reminded him. “Raised on fairy tales first, and only grudgingly introduced to the sciences.”

“The first book I ever read was an anatomy textbook.” Ed said. He doesn’t remember _stories_ , not the ones Riza clearly remembers fondly. Lullabies sure, from both his parents. He remembers his father’s voice more clearly than anything else about him. But even when he was a little kid, he had a pretty good bullshit detector, and if something clearly didn’t make sense, he wouldn’t accept the scientific inconsistencies.

Fuery clicked off the radio, plunging the near-silent room into very noticeable total silence, harsh and sudden. Havoc scowled at his inventory log. Breda stood up and stretched, easing the tension in the muscles of his neck and back after hours of sitting in one spot. “Anyone for the bar?” he asked cheerfully. Hawkeye glared at him. “What?! We’re off the clock!”

Even Ed is aware that the military doesn’t really have a “clock” in the traditional sense, but yes, they have all put in their required work hours for the day, and nothing _really_ critical is being left on the table. No one will die if Havoc miscounts the number of staplers scattered throughout the building, and if Ed has to wait another day or two to hear Mustang’s inevitable lecture, he will not cry about the delay.

The speed with which Jean jumped up from his desk clearly illustrated his answer to Breda’s question, and even Fuery nodded, though a bit hesitantly. Even _Falman_ agreed to join them, and Falman never went out to the bar.  
  
“How ‘bout it, Hawkeye?” Havoc asked. She was, technically, their superior officer, but only by a little bit. Her rank still had the word “lieutenant” in it, which he tried to pretend meant he could still think of her as his almost-equal. He’d been trying to get to know her since the academy, but she was an enigma, and every small fact about her had to be drawn out slowly and carefully. Unless you were Colonel Mustang, apparently.  
  
Instead of directly responding to him, Hawkeye glanced at Ed, still sprawled out on the couch. “Edward is underage.”  
  
“Only if he’s drinking,” Breda pointed out.  
  
“Don’t worry,” Jean loudly stage-whispered, “I’ll slip you some of the good stuff.”  
  
“You will not!” Hawkeye exclaimed, although she’d been considerably younger than fourteen the first time she got drunk. Only because of Roy, though. At least now she was keeping him out of trouble rather than letting him drag her into it.  
  
Havoc rolled his eyes while Hawkeye sighed heavily. “Fine,” she finally agreed, sounding like it physically hurt her. “I will go out with you. _If_ the colonel agrees.”  
  
“If I agree about what?” came a voice from the doorway of the interior office.  
  
“That Hawkeye won’t die if she does something fun once in a while,” Jean replied, watching as Roy Mustang scrubbed his face with his hands and blinked bleary eyes.  
  
“Were you talking about snow?” the colonel asked.  
  
“Two to four inches,” Fuery confirmed. “Or more.”  
  
“You’d think you would have seen enough of snow in North City,” Breda mused. “How long were you there?”

“Year and a half. And I’m glad I don’t have to shovel and climb over and dig through and freeze in it every day. But I still like it.”

Breda just shrugged. Fuery got excited about weird things, sometimes, but that was part of what made him endearing. He still retained some childlike sense of wonder. You don’t see a lot of that in the military.

Ed tracked Mustang carefully as he moved across the room, but it didn’t seem like the colonel was planning to start screaming at him or anything. Eventually, the Fullmetal Alchemist carefully got to his feet and started joining everyone else in gathering coats and personal belongings and heading out of the office. Falman turned off the lights and locked the door behind them, and the security guards and secretary they passed on their way toward HQ’s main doorway added a “be safe” to their usual “good night.”

It doesn’t snow in East City, another reason why the Northern forces always slaughter them in training exercises, especially in the years when those maneuvers take place on their home ground. It isn’t a fair fight. The terrain itself is basically another army. 

But for tonight, and tomorrow… they don’t have to fight a war in the snow. They just get to _be_ in it, and the anticipated break in their usual routine wrapped the team in a general sense of contentment shot through with excitement. Even Mustang, who usually hates cold and snow and the icy freezing rain that more often covers Central, couldn’t help but feel it.

Their usual bar is only a short walk from HQ, which means it is almost always filled with military personnel. Tonight’s no exception, though Mustang’s presence caused a noticeable stir among the tables full of enlisted men, who suddenly tensed up at the appearance of a colonel with the known ability to set people on fire. But when the bartender just kept pouring out drinks like nothing worth noting had happened, people eventually turned back to their own small groups and the hum of conversation resumed.

“We should’ve invited Catalina,” Havoc realized, as they settled into a circle of crowded chairs around a too-small table. “Hawkeye, you can call her, right?”  
  
“Because she’d want to waste her time with you?” Breda quipped. Havoc elbowed his friend in the ribs, but didn’t bring up Rebecca again. He didn’t feel like being rejected tonight, and even though past trends didn’t _always_ predict the future, he figured that the odds of a freak snowstorm occuring on the same night that Catalina developed a sudden interest in him were so low as to be incalculable. He walked over to the bar before that thought became too depressing.  
  
A few minutes later, he returned to the table with enough beers for everyone, including Ed, who smirked like… well, like a fourteen-year-old being admitted to the grown-up table. With alcohol. Hawkeye shot Havoc a _look_ , which he pretended did not terrify him, but she didn’t take the beer away from Ed either. Fuery didn’t touch the mug in front of him, which Mustang noticed even if no one else did. He took the drink gently away from Kain and met the young man’s eyes as he smiled appreciatively.

After two or three beers for most of the table (Ed: 1, Hawkeye: 1, Fuery: 0), they shifted to harder stuff. Even though every single one of them who had been through the Academy knew the little rhyme about “beer before liquor.” Havoc figured he’d been miserably hungover plenty of times before and would be again, and hell, it wasn’t like he had to be at work in the morning.

Falman ordered some kind of classy scotch that Havoc wouldn’t be able to afford in a million years, even though Falman made less money than he did. Whatever. Maybe Mustang was picking up the tab. Maybe the colonel didn’t know that yet.

Havoc and Breda decided it was a tequila kind of night, because if it was going to be fucking freezing outside, at least they could both dream of warmer climes while indoors. Even though Fuery was the only one of them who’d ever actually been in the southern region where it was theoretically possible to sit out on patios sipping margaritas. No one ever actually did that, he’d said. At least not in his neighborhood.

Mustang went for vodka, usually, schnapps if he was knocking back shots with a lady, whiskey if was drinking with Maes. Tonight though, after one of those not-conversations he and Hawkeye had with their eyes, he eased off after the second beer and stayed remarkably clear-eyed and clear-headed while his subordinates quickly surpassed the legal limit for driving or safely shooting a gun. Havoc, Breda, and Falman were all intelligent enough not to try either, and they knew they could count on the sober members of their party to get them home safely. And eventually, even they pushed away the mugs and shotglasses and bottles, and leaned in close around the table for the kind of random conversations you only had at 2200 while well past drunk.  
  
At the Academy, they’d have been playing I Never. Or strip poker, or something equally ridiculous. Havoc was usually all for a game of strip poker, but seeing as how Hawkeye was the only female at the table and was certainly more likely to shoot him than take off her shirt for his entertainment, he wisely chose not to suggest it. Ed seemed kind of bored, and kept looking around the table, obviously debating whether or not he could leave without anyone making a big deal about it. “I think I’m gonna go look for Al,” he finally announced, after maybe fifteen minutes of this.

Mustang nodded his understanding, but before anyone else could say their farewell, Falman stood up and decided that he might as well call it a night, too. Fuery lived in the dorms, too, near enough that he offered to walk with the older man. Havoc glanced at Breda, who shrugged, and then all of them were exiting the bar together.

The colonel helped Hawkeye into her coat, which was either just general chivalry or a hint at something deeper, but Havoc had long ago decided that he didn’t _want_ to know what was going on with his commanding officer and the first lieutenant. Unlike what some people said, he definitely could mind his own business when his own personal well-being and possibly his sanity were at stake.

They walked back to the base, shivering and watching their breath cloud the air, until they reached the small parking lot where Mustang parked his car. He drove everyone home, Breda first and then Havoc, until it was only him and Hawkeye left in the vehicle. The way she looked at him made it clear that she thought he’d done it on purpose.  
  
“It makes sense,” he said, although he really didn’t need to defend himself to her. “You live the furthest from HQ.”

The streets were quiet. The sky was heavy with clouds; just looking up meant anticipating the oncoming storm. And as the clock flipped to zero-hundred and a brand new day started, Mustang turned on the radio, low. Smooth jazz enveloped the silence of the car, somehow complementing it, filling it, without completely replacing it. Roy parked outside of Riza’s apartment building, but she made no move toward getting out of the car.

She shifted instead, turning toward him, until only the cold barrier of the center console remained to remind them that there are rules they’ve both agreed to follow. Mustang reached over that barrier, and rested his hand on Riza’s knee. She let him. “It’s snowing,” she murmured, nodding toward the windshield, stained with the first sporadic splashes of white.  
  
“It is,” Roy agreed.

And Riza pulled on his hand and dragged him out into the flurries that swirled under the streetlight at the corner, although they disappeared as soon as they hit the still-too-warm sidewalk. Roy shivered and pretended not to. Riza drew in a deep breath of frigid air. “I should go,” she finally admitted, although it killed her to walk away from him, to _pull_ herself away from him. Couldn’t they have just _one fucking day_? “Hayate’s been cooped up a long time.”

“I could wait. Walk with you. Both of you.”

“No,” Riza said quietly. “No, you really can’t.”

He nodded, but there was longing and pain in his eyes that she understood too well, and even though he was speaking softly, she flinched as his eyes flickered up to her third floor window. “Ri?” he begged. “Couldn’t we just say we got caught in the storm?”

She held her breath, on the edge of giving in. It would be _so damn easy_.

But then she shook her head.  
  
And Roy let her go.  
  
He half-slept on his couch, too frustrated by his deep need clashing against the strength of Riza’s principles to rest easily. He was jerked to full alertness by the loudly ringing phone when Catalina called him at 0400 to inform him that General Grumman was keeping East Command closed except for essential personnel, which he isn’t, except for when he is.

“You called me at 4am to tell me _not_ to come to work?” he moaned.  
  
“Yeah, well. You could come over anyway, if you want. We could have a coffee or something.” The way she said it made it more than obvious that she knew who he’d rather get a coffee with, but despite being Riza’s best friend, Catalina stayed out of their non-relationship, at least in front of him.

“You have to stay?” Roy’s thoughts were taking a long time to form themselves into coherent sentences. But it was the middle of the night, so who could blame him?

“Nah,” Rebecca said cheerfully. “Only til the sun comes up, I bet. Do you know how many people work here? It’s a lot.”  
  
“ ‘m sorry,” Roy mumbled into the phone. He kept waiting for an excuse to end the call.    
  
“It’s fine. Part of the job, I guess.”

“I’m going back to sleep,” Mustang finally decided. He listened to the click as Catalina hung up the phone.

The next time he opened his eyes, it was hours past sunrise, and he stepped out of his cinderblock apartment into a world covered in white. The snow was still falling, lightly, landing on his coat and in his eyes and in his hair. He tromped through the four or five inches of accumulation in military boots, and reached down to feel the wet cold of the snow against his unprotected hand.

It doesn’t snow in East City. He doesn’t have a shovel, or a hat, or gloves. He stuffed his hands into his pockets and then stood in his own doorway for at least half an hour, watching the weather that meant a day away from the office, a day without paperwork, a break. But a day alone, too.

He sighed, too aware that the excitement of the previous evening had settled into a resigned kind of forced relaxation. He poured himself a cup of coffee and sat with it on the floor, his back against the couch, a sketchbook in front of him. He leaned over the heavy paper and chewed on his lower lip as he sketched out circles and symbols interspersed with chemical equations and both basic and complex math. Despite repeatedly reminding people that he’s still a State Alchemist, there’s just too much to do at work for him to ever be able to concentrate on alchemy, except on his own time. There’s more than half a year until his next assessment, both too much time to matter and not enough to perfect the kind of breakthrough they’re going to ask for. Could he heat up the air, if he wanted to? Could he break down snow?  
  
He shoved the notebook away and laid down on his back on the floor, contemplating that. There’s really only one way to find out, but he’s not sure he wants to perform untested alchemic experiments in the middle of an on-base courtyard, surrounded by officers living here with their wives and kids. Despite occupying this apartment for years, he hasn’t really made much of an effort to make friends with his neighbors. And if those kids, almost all of them born after Ishval, don’t know that he can set things on fire with one quick motion, he doesn’t really want to introduce that fact by making their front lawn explode. Somehow he doesn’t think “It was an accident” would go any better for him here than it did with his aunt twenty years ago.

He made the easy decision to stay inside and stick to theory. And hours later, he was so absorbed that he nearly jumped out of his skin when he heard a knock on his door. He grabbed his gun before he opened the door, out of old, ingrained habit, but he set it down again when he saw a familiar suit of armor standing on the slab of concrete that was his entranceway.

"Al?”  
  
“Hello, Colonel.”  
  
“Move, Al,” a too-familiar voice said, and Mustang would swear he could already feel the headache forming.  
  
“Fullmetal,” he sighed, as Al stepped aside to allow his older brother to talk to Mustang. “What’re you doing here?”

Ed glanced up at Roy. “Come on,” he sighed, as if he were in charge.

“Come on _where_?”

“We’re going to play in the snow,” Al said cheerfully.  
  
“You do know there’s this awesome hill behind the hospital, right?” Ed chipped in.  
  
Obviously, they weren’t going to take no for an answer. Roy’d dealt with Edward Elric’s stubbornness enough to know that he didn’t want to do it on his day off.

Al led the way, and the walk to the hospital took three times as long as it usually did despite his large footprints clearing a path.

“Hey, look, there’s the colonel!” Fuery called out. Ed turned back toward Mustang, grinning as he caught the look on his commanding officer’s face at the moment he realized that his entire team was hanging out and waiting for him. 

Black Hayate barked loudly and ran over to Roy, bashing his head against his knees until the colonel reached down to scratch behind his ears.  
  
Breda yelled as Havoc kicked the makeshift sled he was sitting on (a garbage can lid) over the edge of the hill.

"Where's Falman?" Roy wondered, as he watched Havoc laughing as Breda narrowly avoided a tree.   
  
Ed shrugged. "I dunno. I think he's making hot chocolate or something."   
  
Fuery was working on the start of a snowman, figuring if he hadn’t gotten to make one as a kid, why shouldn’t he do it now? Al went over to help him, his large metallic hands packing snow with ease.

Ed rubbed at his aching shoulder but stopped as soon as he realized Mustang had noticed. And the teenager nodded meaningfully at a point behind Roy’s shoulder. Roy turned around, to see Riza watching him with a soft smile on her face. “I didn’t know if-” he started, but Riza shook her head to stop him before he started.  
  
“Hayate likes the snow,” she said, as if it was as simple as that.  
  
“And you do, too,” Roy replied, easily calling to mind the one time they’d been snowed in at Hawkeye Manor.  
  
Ri held her breath for a long moment, and then she nodded. “Yeah,” she agreed, as she reached out to take his hand. “I do, too.”  
  
Mustang looked down at their joined hands and felt the warmth of her skin against his, and he searched her face for some confirmation that she really was allowing this. Riza shrugged, watching Hayate run around and attempt to bury himself under the snow for a minute before she looked back up at Roy. “We’re off the clock,” she reminded him.

He nodded understanding. The line was pushed just a _little_ bit. Just for today.

A little bit could be enough, could shift the way you looked at the entire world. A little bit of snow in East City stopped everything.

He squeezed Riza’s hand, and smiled.


End file.
